Entering a brave new world

Therefore, when I had to make the choice recently, between an interview in person - which involved an eight-hour round drive, or an interview online - sitting in front of my computer in my own cosy kitchen, it really was a tough call.

You know I love a good road trip, but I was feeling a little grey at the time, due to having three teenage daughters progressing through the audition process for the school musical, and living with that would put any reasonable human being on edge.

So I chose to have my first-ever screen time chat in a job interview environment. Risky.

Is it bad that my first thoughts were purely vain; how big will my double chin look from this angle? What do my earrings say about me? Will they be able to see the strands of grey hair showing through? Is this amount of eyeliner going to travel well electronically?

Then I considered fashion - definitely orange - it's the colour which promotes conversation.

Thirdly, all other aspects re: aesthetics.

For example, best not to have a tired and emotional looking liquor cabinet appearing over my left shoulder as I drone on intelligently about ... who cares what I'm saying, when all anyone is thinking about is my drinking problem!

OK, OK, there's only the Christmas brandy in there anyway.

Wash the floor, shut the curtains to reduce glare ... good.

I'm not sure why I felt it was essential to scrub the chook bucket and vacuum first too; I guess I was worried that I might have to take the laptop on a quick tour of the house?

Goodness knows - I was definitely pretty nervous.

Maybe I should have put a little more thought into what on earth I was going to say during the above-mentioned interview, rather than spending all of my time worrying that my computer wouldn't be clever enough to make the miracle of real-time conversation with a selection panel hundreds of kilometres away happen.

Never fear, the technology worked and I had plenty to say - I was wearing orange after all.